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Apr 30, 2010

First up after the crepes and dandelion jam was the American artist Kellyann Monaghan who lives in Williamsburg, New York. After showing us some of her cool, Hopperesque paintings of NYC - she loves to paint NYC at night because of the different "coloring" to the daylight - she donated Paul Auster's New York Trilogy because of its "mysterious gritty world" which she feels makes his work "timeless." Kelly also gave us Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. While at La Muse she's working on a series of oils based on the countryside around here.

Next came the Australian artist Kate McBride who, after showing us her wonderfully diverse and original works, talked about how she's inspired by Shazia Sikander, the Pakistani artist, showing us Sikander's work in the book she donated, edited by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. For a book where she's from she gave La Muse Markus Zysak's The Book Thief. Kate is here on a barter fellowship, and like Kellyannn is creating some beautiful oil paintings.

The American writer Sarai Michelle Walker brought La Muse Antonio Tabucchi's Pereira Declares "very political novel" and Cowboys Are My Weakness, a collection of short stories by Pam Houston who was Sarai's first fiction teacher and because it is a book that is representative of "the mountain West" where she comes from. Sarai is at La Muse working on a novel.

Last to present her books was the delightful Canadian writer Rhea Tregebov who donated her recently published novel The Knife Sharpener's Bell, a political novel put out by Coteau and a collection of her selected and new poems (alive). Rhea also gave a reading of a great poem: "Remembering History" from her poetry collection. To "represent what I do" Rhea also donated Carmine Starnino's This Way Out as well as Lisa Moore's collection of short stories Degrees of Nakedness. Based in Newfoundland, Rhea loves the stories for many reasons, one of which being because she loves "the way she writes about sex."